collective rest and reading session

TEND (ER) (ING) (ERNESS) is a curated, moving library and archive initiated by arvae (Kenza Benabderrazik and tara lasrado) with the 11th edition of Harvest Festival Marrakech. it is an invitation to think about what it means to tend: to care for, attend to, be attuned to, stay with and make space for things as they unfold. moving between tender, tending and tenderness and centering decolonial and feminist perspectives on agroecology, the library&archive becomes a space for holding and being held. it will move with the festival programme on a karoussa borrowed from Bookaroussa, a small free mobile library for children initiated by Meriem Benmhamed, and continued and transformed for this year’s Harvest. its making becomes part of the practice of tending and carrying something forward. at times, the library becomes a place for collective rest, reading and conversation; at others, it accompanies walks between spaces, with texts read aloud along the way.

tend – to cultivate the conditions for life to grow and continue.
tender – to be attentive to what is living, fragile and becoming.
tending – the continuous work of nurturing (relationships between) land, people and more-than-human life
tenderness – a form of resistance centering care and reciprocity